jeremy versus the wild (swimming with gators and losing wedding rings)

this is my post from yesterday (8/7)

day 2 of the mississippi trip was pretty good. it started with an 80 minute hot and cold rock massage at our hotel. never had one before. not bad at all, but i think i’ll go for the deep tissue next time. massages, like hair highlights (see last post), are another one of those things i feel weird do anyway... especially after taking the bar. plus it was free.

quick side note: i am up on the thirtieth floor of my hotel as i write this and i am hearing some serious thunder outside. earlier i saw a plane that the locals said was a hurricane chaser. i keep thinking katrina. not a pleasant thought, although it would make for an interesting blog post.

moving on. after getting the massage we headed out with some friends for boating and waverunning on a river here mississippi. i always worry a little when out on the rivers here because we are never alone when in them. the rivers here they have gators and water moccasins. they also have big snapping turtles, but such are the types of risk a man like myself is willing to take while out looking for a little adventure. last year i wakeboarded in gator infested waters, this year i only tubed. in both cases, every time i took a spill, i was wondering what lurked beneath. did you ever see spiritual crocodiles?

i am happy to report i still possess all of my fingers and toes, but i am missing my wedding ring. yes, for those of you who know the story, this is the second wedding ring in as many years i have lost now. and yes, i did pick out the second one by myself (see the last post if this puzzles you). the first one i lost wakeboarding in lake mead. this one i lost tubing in the river today. you think i would learn... water sports, wedding rings and me are not a good mix.

aim and i took a spin on the tube just before we left the water. as an addition to my list of bad mixes: aim and i being pulled from a personal recreational vehicle also does not make for a good combination. the last time we tried that was in the snow up at aim’s parents’ cabin when her brother pulled us on a sled behind a four wheeler. he is a bit of a reckless driver and aimee loves to go fast (another bad combination), so we went fast and he drove recklessly, surprisingly, we wrecked. apparently, in that instance, i rolled over aimee’s arm when we crashed and the my crushing weight snapped it like a twig. i couldn’t have known this at the time since after several attempts to ask her if she was hurt or if something was wrong she would not respond.

so, there we were, no idea what was wrong with aim and all of sudden, in broad daylight, with her eyes wide open and with no apparent injury to them, aim begins to proclaim that she can’t see anything. loss of sight is never a good thing. especially when there is really no reason why you shouldn’t have normal sight. no idea what happened there... must have been a poltergeist... maybe shock. turns out she broke her arm (which has a tendency to affect your sight... well, not really), a few days later i broke my fist (see previous wall-kicking post), we both had casts and never got tired of people cracking jokes about how there must have been some serious spousal abuse going on in the family. loved them. no matter how may times someone asked us out in the hall at church who hit whom first, we laughed.

my point is, that something similar happened today. a 7th grader jumped on the waverunner and took us for a spin in the river. i knew right away that this would end badly. remember: aimee likes to go fast and 7th graders generally have no sense of mortality which means they drive recklessly. but, hey, i’m on vacation... what could go wrong (as i look at the window and the storm outside worsens). besides, i have braved these waters before, in fact i have downright defied them and all the thousand pound biting and snapping pressure, venomous poison spitting mongrels within them. what harm could a little jot on some plastic donut filled with air do?

off we went. we flew. it was fun. it was a rush. it was perfect right up until the last slingshot maneuver our young friend performed in an effort to get us off the tube. we whipped around so fast on that final lap, gravity and i had a bit of a disagreement and unfortunately for me, gravity won. i had flashbacks of the sled, the snow, the mountain and aimee being possessed by a poltergeist. i felt myself fly through the air and over aim who lay at my side. i then felt myself roll on the water several times in what i thought to be hydroplane like speed. i finally stopped and realized i wasn’t skipping on the surface of the water at all but rolling on the sand in very shallow water. thank goodness river sand is soft.

i got up, all fingers and limbs accounted for and made sure aim wasn’t hurt or possessed. negative on both accounts. she could see. at that point i felt comfortable laughing and exclaiming how fun the ride was and how it didn’t hurt a bit. i figured the more i laughed and talked about not being injured, the more likely it would be that it would be true. airtight logic.

man, what i would give to see a video of that. it was all good fun until it was time to leave and i realized i was a couple of ounces lighter. i checked my ring finger and lo and behold my wedding ring was gone. i felt sad for a bit, but like i said, it’s not the first time this has happened. besides, recently i was thinking if i could do it all over again, i probably would have chosen a different design (see last post). however, aim now is considering losing hers so she can get a new one.

last note: the boys were watching man versus wild last night, hence the thematic elements throughout. interesting show. dude drank his own urine at one point. the boys were blown away by this. i can only hope they don’t go man versus wild on us during a road trip and do the same with one of the bottles mentioned in a previous post. that’s it, i’m out. i’m gonna go spar with katrina, part two.